Bay Area Storytelling Festival comes to Richmond

Storyteller Diane Ferlatte performs at the Craneway Pavillion in Richmond.

Diane Ferlatte stood in the middle of the stage and extended her arms like a bird. Leaping from one foot to the next, she made quick panting sounds as if she was being chased. She wore an all-black outfit, except for a colorful jacket that resembled a patchwork quilt with dozens of different fabrics sewn together in an African motif- design.

“And he jumped and began to run and made a sound like ooooo oooh, ” she said to a group of young children, who burst into laughter.

The laughter of more than 100 children echoed through the auditorium of the Craneway Pavillion in Richmond, where students in third to sixth grade gathered Thursday for the first day of the 2012 Bay Area Storytelling Festival. The event continues today until Sunday evening at 4:30 p.m.

Ferlatte has been a storyteller for more than 20 years, traveling through South America, Africa, and Asia to tell stories in their most vivid form with costumes, music accompaniment, vocals and dance.

On Thursday, with the help of guitarist Erik Pearson, she told the African folktale “The Hired Hands” to young students from elementary schools across the Bay Area. The story was fitting for a young audience, she said, because it’s a story about a young man making mistakes and learning from lessons from those mistakes.